The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  “Well, then,” Sanders Nicholas said. “We are stuck with each other and with a very large universe.”

  “A disturbing situation,” his lover said in agreement. “Though I think we can endure it.

  “There is a final aspect which I pointed out to the Bundle. The situation we were considering never seemed likely. Destroying an entire system – or moving it out of our universe – is beyond any science we know; and I don’t believe humanity will develop a weapon able to do this. Their technology, at least in the relevant areas, is not impressive; and their economic and political problems are so severe I don’t think they can afford the necessary R and D. But if there are two star-faring species in the galaxy, there ought to be three and four and five. Suppose one of these other species is as hostile as humanity and better organized. Could they create a weapon able to destroy an entire area of space?

  “That’s one thing to consider. The other is, it’s comparatively easy to make a single planet uninhabitable. Even humans could do it. Our home world was safe during the war, because humanity didn’t know where it was. At some point they are going to learn. It’s possible the human government knows already.”

  “Maybe,” said Sanders Nicholas. “I certainly think you ought to assume they know. But they’d have to fight their way here, and I think the hwarhath can stop them. In addition, as you ought to remember, there is a peace treaty.”

  “Some treaties last. Others don’t. This one has no breeding clause.* How can we trust an agreement that hasn’t been made solid – knotted – through the exchange of genetic material?”

  Sanders Nicholas did not answer this question, though the answer is obvious. No treaty can be entirely trusted, if it lacks a breeding clause.

  “Humans send women to the stars. Destroying the Solar System would not destroy their species. But our women prefer to stay at home. If something happened to our home planet, we would not be able to reproduce.”

  “You could borrow human biotechnology,” Sanders Nicholas said.

  “And produce cloned children who are raised by men?” asked Ettin Gwarha. His voice combined disgust and horror, as it should, of course.

  “They wouldn’t have to be clones.”

  “Well, suppose we decided to combine genetic material from men belonging to different lineages. Who would arrange the breeding contract, if our women were all gone? And how could men possibly raise children?”

  “That leaves one obvious alternative,” Sanders Nicholas said. “The hwarhath could do what humans have done: move women out of the home system. You must have thought of this.”

  “The Bundle has discussed the idea,” Ettin Gwarha admitted. “And we have suggested it to the female government. Obviously, unfolding such a plan required far-in-front diplomatic ability. I was sent.” He smiled briefly. “The idea was to establish colonies of young women in distant systems, in stations initially, since they are safer than the surface of any inhabitable planet.

  “To live without the advice of their mothers and senior female relatives?” the Weaving said. “Absolutely not! It’s the job of men to keep the home system safe. If you can’t do it, then we need to talk about your failings and limitations. But we won’t send our daughters to the stars.”

  “Did you suggest sending older women as well?”

  “The Weaving didn’t like the idea; nor was the Bundle entirely happy with it. There are frontmen whose mothers are still living, not to mention other female relatives. Space might become considerably less comfortable, if senior women began to travel.”

  “This is true,” said Sanders Nicholas. “But comfort is not the only important aspect of life. I think the Weaving, and the Bundle, are making a mistake.” He glanced at Ettin Gwarha. “There’s a human proverb which warns against putting all one’s ova in one container. If anything happens to the container – ” †

  Ettin Gwarha tilted his head in agreement. “Nonetheless, the Bundle is not going to argue with the Weaving over an issue that concerns women, at least not at the moment. Most likely, the home system is safe. As you have mentioned, it’s well guarded. Anyone seeking to destroy this world would have to get past many armed and armored ships. But I’d like to see women among the stars. Some of them would enjoy the experience.”

  Sanders Nicholas made no answer, possibly because he was tired.

  Soon after the two of them went to sleep. In the morning they continued their journey, going down out of the mountains to a railroad junction. There, at day’s end, they caught a local train. All night they rattled through the Atkwa foothills, riding in a freight car, since there wasn’t a passenger car for men.

  He’d had worse accommodations, Sanders Nicholas said. At least there were windows, though not much to see: the hills as areas of darkness against a starry sky. Now and then the lights of a station flashed past, revealing nothing except an empty platform.

  By sunrise they had reached the plain. *

  *Most likely the author is referring to regional bias, since this is the kind of prejudice the hwarhath are most willing to discuss and condemn. Inhabitants of the home planet’s southern hemisphere regard northerners as overcivilized and likely to stray from traditional values. Inhabitants of the northern hemisphere regard southerners as rubes. In addition, neighboring families often snipe at one another; and most people, north and south, regard cities with suspicion. It’s one thing for men to live intermixed in space. They’re kept in line by military discipline. But most of the inhabitants of cities are women. Obviously, they aren’t in the army, which is entirely male. What’s going to keep them in line, now that they live among unkin?

  *This passage may refer to human education, which strikes the hwarhath as strangely like a contest where some players must win and others lose. What kind of society wants to produce young men who have already failed at the age of twenty? What kind of society treats the training of the next generation as if it were a game?

  *The human term would be a geosynchronous station.

  *This interchange may be an example of the hwarhath sense of humor.

  †Black dwarfs, EDSOs, and clothed singularities. There is no reason to believe the hwarhath have discovered such a stellar cluster.

  *The hwarhath believe public health should not be boring. The best of their sex education programs are, according to scholars who have studied this subject, absolutely first-class erotica, to which humans can – and often will – respond.

  *Premodern hwarhath math and physics recognized five aspects of objects in space. These were: location, extension, expansion-to-the-side, expansion-up-and-down, and relation. (The human equivalents to these are: point, line, plane, and volume. Relation has no exact equivalent.) Early modern theory required a sixth dimension: duration or time. This made people uneasy, since the hwarhath like to count everything in groups of five, and attempts were made to get back to five dimensions. Time could not be eliminated, but maybe something could be done with one of the original aspects of space. Were location and relation both necessary? Did the two kinds of expansion need to be counted separately? But all six aspects seemed to have a kind of reality. There were problems that couldn’t be solved without them, just as there were problems that couldn’t be solved, until they were simplified by the elimination of one or more aspects. In the end most hwarhath accepted the existence of all six, though they continue to speak of “five dimensions” in ordinary speech. More recent theories, such as those explaining FTL travel and why the universe exists, have required even more dimensions. How the hwarhath have dealt with this problem is not yet clear to humans.

  *The hwarhath equivalent of the human High Command. The Bundle rules hwarhath society in space and hwarhath males wherever they may be.

  *The hwarhath male uniform is a pair of shorts: knee-length, loose and abundantly provided with pockets. This, plus sandals, is adequate for life in a space station or ship. Their costume when on planets is more varied.

  *The hwarhath name for an FTL transfer point.

&nbs
p; *A hwarhath measure of time: one tenth of a standard hwarhath day, 2.31 human hours.

  *The equivalent human rank is major. There is no easy (or politically neutral) way to discuss the two characters just introduced. Therefore they will not be discussed, except to note that any ordinary hwarhath reader would recognize the pair at once. Much of the humor in the rest of the story lies with Akuin’s attempts to figure out things all other hwarhath know.

  *Most hwarhath believe that Nicholas Sanders changed sides because of love. As a group, they are more romantic than humans. This is especially true of hwarhath men. Romantic love is the great consolation in lives that are often difficult. It is also a dangerous emotion, which threatens basic loyalties and thus the fabric of hwarhath society. The hwarhath, men especially, regard it with gratitude and fear.

  †The hwarhath often comment on humanity’s obsession with food and violence. Both food and violence are necessary, but neither requires the huge amount of thought and practice that humans put in. The human interest in food strikes the hwarhath as funny. Our interest in violence makes their fur rise.

  *The Helig Institute is on the home planet and thus under the control of the hwarhath female government rather than the Bundle. As far as can be determined from a distance, the two halves of hwarhath society treat each other as genuine sovereign governments, whose interests are not always identical.

  *As every reader ought to know, humans and hwarhath can’t interbreed.

  †Obviously, the author did some research on human culture, though it isn’t certain what she thought this proverb means, since the word translated here as “ova” is much more likely to be used in reference to hwarhath reproduction than in reference to eggs for eating. The hwarhath know that humans have the ability to freeze human eggs and early-stage embryos and can grow foetuses to term outside a human uterus. The hwarhath have not developed a comparable technology; it strikes them as wrong to interfere with the female part of reproduction. However, they practice artificial insemination and have frozen their men’s sperm from the moment it became possible to do so. Almost all hwarhath families have sperm banks. Prudent families have several banks in different locations. Most hwarhath think this is excessive caution. It’s enough to have a solid building, several refrigeration units and a back-up power supply. The sperm of important men is, of course, kept in more than one refrigerator.

  *There is no reason to believe that the Bundle, or any hwarhath senior officer, has advocated an idea as radical as putting women into space. It belongs to the author, who is almost certainly female, though the story (like most hwarhath fiction) was published anonymously. Apparently, there are hwarhath women who want to travel outside the home system, and the real point of the story, what the hwarhath would call its center or hearth, seems to be this final argument in favor of travel for women. Why didn’t the author argue her point directly, by – for example – writing a story about women actually going to the stars? Maybe because she felt that would be fantasy, at least at present, and she wanted to write science fiction.

  FOOTVOTE

  Peter F. Hamilton

  There’s an old expression: to vote with your feet. The story that follows takes us to a troubled near-future England, and, courtesy of an amazing new invention, gives us a disquieting demonstration of just exactly what that means . . .

  Prolific British writer Peter F. Hamilton has sold to Interzone, In Dreams, New Worlds, Fears, and elsewhere. He sold his first novel, Mindstar Rising, in 1993, and quickly followed it up with two sequels, A Quantum Murder and The Nano Flower. Hamilton’s first three books didn’t attract a great deal of attention, on this side of the Atlantic, at least, but that changed dramatically with the publication of his next novel, The Reality Dysfunction, a huge modern Space Opera (it needed to be divided into two volumes for publication in the United States) that was itself only the start of a projected trilogy of staggering size and scope, the Night’s Dawn trilogy, with the first volume followed by others of equal heft and ambition (and which also raced up genre best-seller lists), The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God. The Night’s Dawn trilogy put Hamilton on the map as one of the major players in the expanding subgenre of The New Space Opera, along with writers such as Dan Simmons, Iain Banks, Paul McAuley, Gregory Benford, Alastair Reynolds, and others; it was successful enough that a regular SF publisher later issued Hamilton’s reference guide to the complex universe of the trilogy, The Confederation Handbook, the kind of thing that’s usually done as a small-press title, if it’s done at all. Hamilton’s other books include the novels Misspent Youth and Fallen Dragon, a collection, A Second Chance at Eden, and a novella chapbook, Watching Trees Grow. His most recent book is a new novel, Pandora’s Star. He’s had stories in our Fifteenth and Eighteenth Annual Collections.

  I BRADLEY ETHAN MURRAY pledge that starting from this day the First of January 2003, and extending for a period of two years, I will hold open a wormhole to the planet New Suffolk in order that all decent people from this United Kingdom can freely travel through to build themselves a new life on a fresh world. I do this in the sad knowledge that our old country’s leaders and institutions have failed us completely.

  Those who seek release from the oppression and terminal malaise that now afflict the United Kingdom are welcome to do so under the following strictures.

  1. With citizenship comes responsibility.

  2. The monoculture of New Suffolk will be derived from current English ethnicity.

  3. Government will be a democratic republic.

  4. It is the job of Government to provide the following statutory services to the citizenship to be paid for through taxation.

  a. The enforcement of Law and Order; consisting of a police force and independent judiciary. All citizens have the right to trial by jury for major crimes.

  b. A socialized health service delivered equally to all. No private hospitals or medical clinics will be permitted, with the exception of ‘vanity’ medicine.

  c. Universal education, to be provided from primary to higher levels. No private schools are permitted. Parents of primary and secondary school pupils are to be given a majority stake in governorship of the school, including its finances. All citizens have the right to be educated to their highest capability.

  d. Provision and maintenance of a basic civil infrastructure, including road, rail, and domestic utilities.

  5. It is not the job of Government to interfere with and overregulate the life of the individual citizen. Providing they do no harm to others or the state, citizens are free to do and say whatever they wish.

  6. Citizens do not have the right to own or use weapons.

  JANNETTE

  It was the day Tony Blair was due to give evidence to the Hutton enquiry. The Today program on Radio Four was full of eager anticipation, taunting their opponent to come out and face their allegations full on, confident he would screw up. Over in Iraq, what was left of the British Army contingent had suffered more attacks from the population overnight. And I’d forgotten to buy Frosties for Steve.

  “Not muesli!” he spat with the true contempt only seven-year-olds can muster. If only the TUC leadership had that kind of determination when facing Gordon Brown’s latest abysmal round of budget cuts.

  “It’s good for you,” I said without engaging my brain. After seven years you’d think I’d know not to make that kind of tactical error with my own son.

  “Mum! It’s just dried pigeon crap,” he jeered as I stopped pouring it into the bowel. Olivia, his little sister, started to giggle at the use of the NN word. At least she was spooning up her organic yogurt without a fuss. “Not nice, not nice,” she chanted.

  “What do you want then?” I asked.

  “McDonald’s. Big Cheesy One.”

  “No!” I know he only says it to annoy me, but the reflex is too strong to resist. And I’m the Bad Mother yet again. Maybe I shouldn’t preach so hard. But then, that’s Colin speaking.

  “How about toast?” I asked.


  “Okay.”

  I couldn’t believe it was that easy. But he sat down at the table and waited with a smug look on his face. God he does so look like Colin these days. Is that why he’s becoming more impossible?

  “What’s the prim?” Olivia asked.

  Today had moved on from snipping at their public enemy number one to cover the demonstration at Stanstead.

  “Public Responsibility Movement,” I said. “Now please finish your breakfast. Daddy will be here soon.” He’d better be.

  I put the toast down in front of Steve, and he squirted too much liquid honey over it. Golden goo oozed down over the table. Both of them were suddenly silent and eating quickly, as if that would speed his arrival.

  The flat’s back door was open in an attempt to let in some cooler air. The summer was damn hot, and dry. Here in Islington the breeze coursed along the streets like gusts of desert air.

  “Poooeee,” Steve said, holding his nose as he munched down more toast. I had to admit, the smell that drifted in wasn’t good.

  Olivia crumpled her face up in real dismay. “That’s horrid, mum. What is it?”

  “Someone hasn’t tied up their bin bags properly.” The pile in the corner of De Beauvoir Square was getting ridiculously big. As more bags were flung on top, so the ones at the bottom split open. The SkyNews and News24 programs always showed them with comparison footage of the ’79 Winter of Discontent.

  “When are they going to clear it?” Steve asked.

  “Once a fortnight.” Though I’d heard on the quiet that nearly 10 percent of the army had already deserted, and that was before they had to provide civic utility assistance squads along with fire service cover, prison guard duties, engineering support to power stations, and invading Iraq. We’d be lucky if the pile was cleared every month. I’d seen a rat the size of a cat run across the square the other day. I always thought rodents that big were just urban legend.